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A new discovery about the inner life and mental health of one of Britain’s most researched monarchs, Queen Victoria - from the unpublished diaries of her doctor. When Matthew Sweet first read these diaries, he couldn’t quite believe it. He was seeing a genuinely new, unpublished and unresearched document that revealed the closely guarded mental health struggles of Queen Victoria - a factual account in the personal diaries of Doctor Robert Ferguson, never intended for publication. Once kept locked and in private hands, these volumes are now available in the Royal College of Physicians. Nowadays we hardly ever discover something new about a well known figure like Queen Victoria. So much has been written about her, so much has been researched – but this is not only a first which changes the way we’ll think about Victoria, it is also a factual account from her doctor, kept in his personal diaries – not court gossip, not speculation, not malicious rumour – but factual notes kept for posterity. Dr Ferguson was Victoria’s ‘accoucheur’, her obstetrician, and he was called to see her in 1841, as a 22 year old mother of two, just after the birth of her heir. A “pale and haggard” Albert told him, “the Queen has heard you have paid much attention to mental disease, and she is afraid she is about to lose her mind! She sees visions and hears sounds… She thinks of worms eating her, and is weeping and wretched”. Years before modern day psychoanalysis and the couch, Victoria’s mental landscape sounds like something from Freud. Though the diaries are now in the public domain, this story has never been explored before. In his journey to understand the experiences of the Queen, Matthew Sweet is also joined by leading Psychoanalyst Susie Orbach (therapist to Princess Diana and author of classic Fat is a Feminist Issue), Mariusz Misztal (Professor of history at of Krakow University) who is transcribing these diaries, historian Fern Riddell (author of Victoria's Secret), and Dream Scientist Caroline Horton (Professor of Sleep and Cognition at Lincoln Bishop University). With readings from Dr Ferguson's diaries by Jason Barnett. With thanks to Bethlem Museum of the Mind and the Royal College of Physicians Archive. Presenter: Matthew Sweet Producer: Allegra McIlroy